“The army must fully strengthen military training in order to be ready for war,” the Chinese president said in a message, according to the Spanish press.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to focus its efforts on “preparation for war,” a Communist Party spokesman told the British newspaper The Guardian.

“The army must fully strengthen military training to be ready for war,” was the message from President Xi, who had already warned at a recent Chinese Communist Party congress that “dangerous storms” were on the horizon.

This Tuesday during a visit in military uniform to the command center of the Central Commission (CMC), the body that oversees China’s armed forces, Xi also urged the country’s military to be “ready for war at any time” as the country “faces an increasingly unstable and an uncertain security situation.”

Xi, as chairman of the CMC, urged all military personnel to devote their energies to developing “combat capability” as well as “improving their ability to lead and win war.”

This is not the first time Xi has sent such a message to his troops, having issued the order in 2013, shortly after he came to power, and in 2017, which coincided with Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House. However, The Guardian assures that analysts agree that this time Xi “has stepped up his rhetoric.”

It “sends a message to the United States and Taiwan,” says Willie Lam of the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank in Washington.

During his speech at the Communist Party congress, Xi made strong statements about Washington’s support for Taipei, going so far as to say that China “does not give up the use of force” to restore Taiwan’s sovereignty.